Pod Insights MarTech Podcast ™ // Marketing + Technology = Business Growth Tips For Creating Engaging Videos About this episode Learning & Video Ambassador at TechSmith, Matt Pierce, discusses tips for creating engaging videos. In this episode, Matt discusses his perspectives on: leveraging audience research for content creation strategies, impact of audience preferences on marketing campaigns, key findings from the study on audience preferences, adapting strategies to meet changing audience demands, and best practices for enhancing audience engagement. Show NotesConnect With: Matt Pierce: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iHereEverything.com.
0:25 Speaker 01 From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55% to 65% open rate.
0:36 Speaker 02 Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.
0:42 Speaker 03 Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.
0:46 Speaker 01 If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.
0:53 Speaker 00 Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.
1:15 Speaker 04 Welcome to the Martech Podcast. I'm your host, Benjamin Shapiro. Thank you for joining us live. Today, we're publishing on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, I guess we're calling it X now, all of the places. And we've got a great topic for you today, something that's near and dear to my heart. We're going to be talking about video creation, something that we're focusing more here on the Martech Podcast and with my company, I Hear Everything. We're going to be talking about what audiences want from creators and some tips for creating engaging videos. Joining us today is Matt Pierce from TechSmith. Matt, welcome to the Martech Podcast. Very excited to have you here.
1:57 Speaker 05 Thank you so much for having me.
1:58 Speaker 04 I want to move on to our second topic today, which is tips for creating engaging videos, something that I am deeply interested in, knowing that we're on Ecam Live, we're doing our live streams for the First time. Hopefully this has been engaging. Matt, let's bring it back here. I worry that, you know, so many bells and whistles, so much stuff is moving, or are we not moving fast enough? And we need more stuff floating to keep everybody's attention. Help me figure this out. We already did secret sauce. Let me find another gimmick. Let's do, are you toss up? I love our segments here, Matt. Let's do a toss up. What do you think is more important? Do you think that you should be focusing on video production by using long form content?
2:40 Speaker 04 And repurposing, or should you be just creating your short form content upfront?
2:45 Speaker 05 I hate to answer with it depends, but I think it depends on your resources and what your messages are. I think either way can work. What you have to decide is, one, like you said, where are the platforms? What is your priority? Because they can't all be your priority. So which ones are you going to prioritize? Then go from there. So if YouTube as a platform is your priority, start with a long form, kind of 16 by nine, horizontal content, repurpose it into vertical. But if you're saying my audience is really on key on Tik Tok, and I want to be on Tik Tok, your production quality is going to drop a little bit. You're going to get out your mobile phone. You're going to do some vertical videos and you're going to go over there and then figure out, okay, I can take that to YouTube Shorts. I can take that to Instagram and so forth. So I think it really depends, but I think either is fine.
3:27 Speaker 05 So it's not much of a toss up is, but you've got to make a decision or you've got to hire help.
3:31 Speaker 04 Look, are you an in-house marketer or consultant? Cause it depends is a classic consulting answer. Matt, I'm going to press you here. Obviously it depends, but there's a couple of different things.
3:40 Speaker 05 I would say if I'm pushed on the topic, right now, what we're doing is focused on much more on the short form, vertical content, because we can do it faster, we can get it out quicker, and we can reach more of the audiences, because platforms are supporting that. Whereas like YouTube videos have a certain style, and you can put those other places, but YouTube videos kind of feel like a YouTube video, and people notice that on those other platforms.
4:02 Speaker 04 I won't bust your chops too much, but you said it depends. And here's the thing that I think it depends on. It depends on your type of business. It depends on whether you are trying to reach a B2B versus a B2C audience. In my opinion, if you are focusing on B2C, then your channel mix is going to be different. Now you're looking more at Instagram, TikTok, maybe you're getting into X as your social media distribution. Yes, YouTube, but there's also a bunch of YouTube shorts, but I think that you're probably thinking about social media as your engagement channel. And then that's one mix. I'm leaning social shorts. If I'm thinking about B2B content, I'm probably saying, I really need to be in LinkedIn first
4:46 Speaker 04 and foremost, then we're looking at YouTube and X. I'm going horizontal, hopefully doing live streams. That's really, to me, what it depends on. What type of business are you running?
4:57 Speaker 05 I think my only pushback to that is that while I think you could make the distinction for B2C to B2B, the reality is a lot of B2B folks that are going to see content are in those other platforms as well. So that's about a little bit about that fit. Who are you trying to talk to? And can you find them? It's definitely a lot harder from a B2B standpoint. But you know, if you're trying to sell to like a manager of an IT department to get buy-in for your product, or maybe you're trying to get to the VP of Marketing, I can tell you my VP of Marketing, she's on TikTok. She can tell you about the trend, you know, it's very demure. That's the thing right now. Right? So if she sees something though, she has brought stuff to us that said, hey, I saw this. Could you go check this out? There's a play there, but you have to be very strategic about that. And knowing that that's a lot harder than to like, say, just going to LinkedIn and saying, hey, these folks
5:42 Speaker 05 are focused on business or focused on learning kind of the tools of the trade here. Let's just go there.
5:46 Speaker 04 I feel like the B2C content is always bleeding edge and it trickles down to B2B. And all of a sudden, you're seeing more personal content, more memes, more high fidelity video dripping down to things like LinkedIn. But that wasn't always the case. LinkedIn was mostly just text posts until relatively recently.
6:07 Speaker 05 Yeah. And it's still growing. There's a lot of opportunity there. So if you're looking to get into LinkedIn and video, this is actually a great time because a lot of open space there.
6:14 Speaker 04 So when we think about creating engagement in videos, right, there's obviously the content, you're obviously thinking about your channels. Talk to me about the way that we're producing content. We've gone from user generated content, just grab your phone and snap something and publish it into now the world seems to be going a little higher fidelity multimodal. It's definitely the trend that we're going, trying to produce, you know, higher quality, better videos, something that's more compelling. What's the right way to do video capture that actually creates more engagement?
6:46 Speaker 05 If we're talking about video capture in and of itself, one thing that we've noticed, and I'll just pull from the study here for just a second, is like, over time, there's two things that matter about video capture. And we'll put them together because I think they're key components of the whole thing is one, audio quality is king. It's been in the last four times we've done this study, audio, audio, audio has to be clear, has to be sound good, you can't have lots of background noise because that will kill any video, any type.
7:11 Speaker 04 I'm going to get closer to my mic now that we're talking about it.
7:13 Speaker 05 That's a good idea. So audio is number one. From a video capture, the reality is that we've got such powerful devices. Don't go and go out and buy a bunch of camera gear to start off. Learn some techniques, some basic techniques. One of the things I see a lot of times, and I see this a lot with people taking pictures too, is they're like, hey, could you take a picture for us? And what is first thing they do? They pick up the phone, they're going to take the picture and they step back. Learn to get close. People like faces. People like to feel like they're engaged with whomever is talking. And that's a very simple thing. And there's a lot of other techniques that you could apply. But I think from a like $0 quick to apply, just lean in a little bit. I actually had a guest on my podcast that was, he's a video producer, actually created an ad for the Super Bowl. And when he came on the podcast, similar to what we're doing now, he was like super
7:58 Speaker 05 close to his camera, like basically his face filled the entire frame. And I'm like, is that how you want it? He's like, absolutely. He's like, people engage better with your face. And so I think there's simple things like that we can do. And we could, there's a whole bunch of other things that come along with video production. We could talk about that, I think, help with engagement. There is no, again, kind of one panacea, one thing that you should do. It's going to really depend on what you're trying to do, the style of the video. But you want to create a library, basically, that you can pull the parts and pieces that you need as you need them. So you can put them together to make a great, compelling, interesting, relevant piece of content.
8:34 Speaker 04 I've been leaning forward. I've got my mic closer to my mouth. I'm trying to get as much face to the camera as I possibly can. I appreciate the advice. I also think that there's the question about motion and graphics. And if you're doing a good job with your video capture, it doesn't have to be a ton. I just went through a whole round. I wrote a big LinkedIn post about how I rebuilt my home studio. My webcam is now my alter ego. But I've got a new camera. It's great, but it's not world changing. A lot of it is just getting everything set up the right way. But when you have good, high quality capture, you need to be able to have something that is engaging. How do you keep people's attention when you're creating video and not just have one face talking the entire time?
9:17 Speaker 05 The livestream here is a great example, right? You're making some changes. You're switching up. You're being seen. I'm being seen. We're seeing some different kind of setups. You're bringing in graphics. All of that can help. If you look at professional television, like a TV show, and this is something everyone can try, it will ruin the show for you, but it's worth doing. Pick your favorite show and just count between the changes. So if you start at the very beginning, every time it changes, the screen changes, the scene changes, something about it really changes, start counting again. So let's say it'd be one, two, three, scene changes, then you go back to one. What you'll find is that time and movement is like one second, one and a half seconds at most. Now, there are very artsy filmmakers who will do long pushes or something like that, but
10:00 Speaker 05 even then, they're usually following something along a hallway or down through whatever situation. So you want to keep things changing. So it could be that like you've got two cameras. So maybe you've got, you're cutting in and out. If all you've got is one camera, and particularly like, let's say you're using a phone, you set your phone to 4K recording, which takes a little bit of space. So make sure it gets a space. And then when you're editing, do the simple trick where basically you're maybe waist up to top of head. And then to cut in and out, you're just kind of pushing in so a little bit closer, then it's back. And you can do that at cuts where you're trying to cover up a mistake. And it makes, again, it's just a simple change that makes everything look a little bit better. It also helps if you don't like the look of jump cuts. But here's the thing, YouTube creators are using jump cuts, which basically means you've got two clips together. It looks
10:43 Speaker 05 like the person kind of like moved rapidly. Those jump cuts, it's motion, it's engagement. People are looking for things that move or just wired that way. And that, that's one thing that will help.
10:53 Speaker 04 How do you feel about After Effects and graphics? It's one of the things we've got. Hey, look, all the YouTube stuff, subscribe, link. Wonderful. How much stuff should be popping up to keep information present? And how much should you just be working on scene changes?
11:08 Speaker 05 It depends on your goal, because if you're talking about you're trying to teach somebody a how to or something like that, it's very different than if it's like an informational kind of commercial. If it's more you're more about, I want to get you information. I want to get you learning something. You want to actually kind of limit some of that because you get this, what's called cognitive load, this heavy weight on people's brain when they're trying to read, watch and listen. They can listen and they can watch and they can do that pretty well, multi-streaming. But once you add that reading component in, they're like, oh, my gosh, I gotta figure out what this is. It gets to be heavy. Or if there's lots of things you're following around and you're plus watching a person, it just gets cognitively heavy. So you want to be careful there. Now, I think with commercials, again, go watch what they're putting on networks on over the air kind of streaming channels. And you can start to see like, how are they using motion?
11:52 Speaker 05 So it can be very effective for drawing attention. But ultimately, I think you want to make sure there's one focus, your subscribe button there that popped up. Great example. You can pop that up. It's low lift. I see subscribe buttons enough in my life that I don't have to really think hard about what it is. A little animation draws my attention to it because at that moment, that's what you're trying to do. You're not trying to draw attention to anything else. It was like, hey, don't forget, this is an action I want you to take. So you just want to be thoughtful about it. I think there's lots of place for motion and graphics to be involved. I've noticed the transitions here, like the lower thirds come in for the names. That's great. It's low lift. It doesn't take too much attention away from anything else. But again, you're drawing to a specific focus that, hey, this is Matt Pierce. He's from TechSmith or Ben Shapiro or whatever it might be. And so I think you just want to balance it out.
12:37 Speaker 05 It's kind of that litmus test of, I can't always explain it, but I know it when I see it. And you'll just watch your video and say like, how would someone feel watching this? Are they overwhelmed? Or is this really adding to the things that I'm doing? Another kind of analogy here is that movies, if you watch what's in movies, any prop, any situation, everything has a purpose. So any motion graphic you do should have a purpose, should have value, should be adding to the message, adding to the thing that you want to have happen at the end of that video.
13:04 Speaker 04 The clip needs to jump around. You need to move. You want to have some sort of visual element every couple of seconds, definitely more than a minute. It's one of the things that I'm trying to figure out. My biggest problem, to be honest with you, is I keep hitting the wrong key and then all of a sudden I'm in the wrong clip and now, hey, we're getting used to doing all this stuff all together at once. I want to move on to what we're going to call the big finish. You've done this wonderful study. You've interviewed 1,000 different people that are watching videos to understand what their behaviors are, what their desires are. I'm sure there's more information in your studies. What didn't we cover? Let's go through the big finish.
13:40 Speaker 05 One of the big things that's really interesting to me is length of video and what people ascribe to why they prefer that length of video. So it's interesting because we've seen this shift over time and I'm a proponent of like, look, short is possible, long is needed. That's always good advice, but when we start to have to put a number on it, what this year's study says is that a lot of people for informational and instructional videos, just to be again, clarifying that this is not entertainment, the majority of the people, so 24% of the people actually said 10 to 19 minutes was the preferred length, which was astounding to me. I'm like 10 to 19 minutes. That's actually seems really long. Now, just to give clarity, three to four minutes, 16% of the people said that. Five to six minutes was 19% of the people. So it's not like everybody said, I want 10
14:22 Speaker 05 to 19 minutes, but the length of time that we get is important because then that gives you room. You think about a podcast like this, people are going to listen to more than 30 seconds of it. But what's really important is we actually break that down in the report and give ascribed reasons. People said, the reason I want this longer video is because I want to dive in to the information. I want to learn a new skill or I want to learn about people that said they want it really short. They're just like, I just want a really quick general topic. Maybe it's a feature. I want to know what that feature does.
14:52 Speaker 04 I have a question for you related to that, where people generally want are the most common length of a video, 10 to 19 minutes. Did you find any disparity based on age? Is it a younger generation wants their short form content because the tagline is they don't have the attention span anymore? Or is it just everybody's kind of consistent?
15:13 Speaker 05 I don't know that I have the age data right in front of me and that's a great question for us to dig into, but I know from past studies, I think across age, it was fairly consistent. Now, remember, we're already talking about an age group that is they're out of school. These are not college students, so it's a little bit older, but I don't have a specific answer for that. But my guess is it's fairly consistent.
15:31 Speaker 04 Any other takeaways from your study?
15:33 Speaker 05 One thing I think is really important, particularly because we talked about how do you multi-purpose all this stuff and the role of AI becomes much more apparent, right? How do we use AI to maybe further the things that we're trying to do because we're trying to multi-purpose? There's tools out there that will take a long-form video and cut it into clips like Opus Clips is one of those. And I think one of the key things that we saw here is that 90% of the people in the study said they were open to AI-assisted creation, right? Like, they wanted, like, okay, if someone used AI, I'm okay with that. But 75% of them had concerns, and I think those concerns are telling, if you are going to use AI, it's accuracy of content. So that kind of goes back to fit, right? Like, people want to know that this is accurate, it fits my needs and the thing I'm trying to do. They want, 24% of the people said quality of content, right?
16:18 Speaker 05 Is it good quality or did it just, the AI hallucinate something? And then 21% said that they had issues with origins of the content, like, where did it come from? So that's where we, as marketers and creators, get to be really thoughtful about, like, hey, I want this to be mine. I don't want the robot to write it for me, so you can really source that well. I think that was another key kind of thing, is that there's room here to grow with AI. And AI means a lot of things in video, everything from script creation to social media creation to cutting up the videos, to even doing things like, we don't necessarily think about it as AI, but like, background removal. That's a type of AI with machine learning. So there's lots of applications here, and it is worth looking into and using to help you scale.
16:56 Speaker 04 We are all wondering whether AI is delivering the truth or making up something that it thinks we want to hear. It's fascinating to hear how it's being applied into video creation. Matt, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Thanks so much for being my guest. I learned a ton. And honestly, this is something that we're paying a ton of attention to, trying to create more content for the right platforms. I think the word of the day here is fit. You have to understand who your audience is. You have to understand what channel you're publishing to and your video, whether you're doing the highest-quality video in the world for publication everywhere, whether you're just using your iPhone, get close to that camera, have good audio, say the things that you need to say, but honestly, keep it moving.
17:41 Speaker 04 That seems to be the tip of the day. That wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Matt Pierce, the learning and audio video ambassador for TechSmith. If you'd like to get in touch with Matt, we're going to publish a link to his LinkedIn profile on our show notes. If you find the podcast, we'll put it on the comments for anybody that wants to get in touch with Matt. If you're on YouTube or LinkedIn, you can always visit TechSmith.com if you want more information about TechSmith. Again, we publish this live YouTube, Instagram. If you want to see the full video, feel free to share this. We're going to break it down into shorter format videos. We're going to be putting them on YouTube, create some social content out of this as well.
18:23 Speaker 04 If you're interested in creating a media brand like the Martech Podcast and you want to see how the sausage is made, go to IHEAREVERYTHING.COM. You can find our contact information. I'll walk you through there as well. Thanks again for joining this episode. And until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.
19:07 Speaker 00 Thanks for listening to the Martech Podcast and I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit IHEAREVERYTHING.COM.
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